Civics 101
By guest writer Little Sister
We learned in Civics 101 class that there were three branches of the United States government; the executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch. The executive branch, which includes the president and his cabinet, has powers of command. The legislative branch makes the laws and finally the judicial branch (the Supreme Court) determines if any of those laws violate our constitution. Each branch was supposed to be independent from the others and be a check on the power of the other two. That is how we learned it; our founding fathers attempted to craft a system of government that allowed participation by the people as well as protection of the people from the tyranny of government powers. Our system was set in place with the ratification of the Constitution in 1787.
Sitting President Joe Biden wishes to remake the Supreme Court in his own image, which is to say left of center. That would involve adding seats to the court which he or his Democrat successors could fill with leftist justices of their own hearts. Also he’d impose term limits on Supreme Court appointments. Term limits were, however, emphatically NOT what our founding fathers had in mind. They wanted no statutory limits in order to allow long standing members of the court to be a sort of “echo” of the administration that appointed them. This was felt to be a moderating force that would prevent over zealous incomers from enacting big changes too much too soon. They worked hard to create a government with checks and balances and created a constitution that has stood the test of time for over 200 years. It was not intended to be changed in order to give any political party totalitarian control. The independence of three branches was felt to be a cornerstone of our system of government.
Many of today’s young citizens, however, don’t seem to have similar concerns. They have no issue with the dramatic changes described above. Perhaps instead of learning the correct pronouns to use when addressing individuals of unclear gender, they should be studying Civics 101 instead.